Confessions of a One-Track Mind

1991 was the year of the Pittsburgh Tattoo Convention. It was advertized in the tattoo 'zines, and I *really* wanted to go. I wanted to see more tattoos---this was before you could go to Wally World and see fifty people with tatts any Saturday afternoon. There were very few shops in my area, because Florida had very restrictive laws at the time. GK and I scoped them out when she was looking to get hers, and the closest one was about 25 miles away.

I wanted to get a tribal background for my lizard, and Shaw was going to be there. Which I did.

I also had An Adventure. Except during the years of my inheritance, I've never had a lot of money. I didn't reserve a room, because the info packet had advertised a Con suite.

Unfortunately, the suite wasn't set up on Thursday when I arrived (and it turned out to be a daytime-only thing anyway). I got creative; I found a table on the mezzanine with a floor-length cloth, crawled under it, head pillowed on my briefcase, and slept fitfully til morning, when I hit the hotel brunch and ate half my body weight in bacon.

That evening, when I was standing around talking with a gal who'd also gotten tattooed that day---there was a nightly parade of fresh tatts---I mentioned my room dilemma, and she knew a guy who had a room...I ended up sleeping on the floor again, this time with actual pillows. Nice guy, too bad he was checking out that morning and going wherever.

That night, I found the ladies' room less traveled---this was a nice hotel, and the ladies room on the far side of the mezzanine had an area as you went in with little stools and counters with big mirrors above them, and I pulled out the stools, crawled under the counter and (All together now---) went to sleep on the floor. Was awakened around six by a cleaner, who was very nice. She gave me a clean washcloth to freshen up with, and we chatted. She had family in Bithlo---"Beautiful downtown Bithlo" is something of a local joke, it's a wide place in the road---but it was one of those playful moments from the Universe.

I kept dozing off in the Con suite---which was a partitioned space to one side of the mezzanine, NOT an actual suite---and the lobby. I'd made the mistake of thinking that since the Con ended on Sunday, most people would be departing Monday morning. No such luck.

I ended up taking the hotel shuttle bus to the airport and not sleeping there. Not even on the floor. To this day, I regard the Pittsburgh airport as an outpost of Hell.

It goes down as one of the craziest things I've ever done, and sleep deprivation or not, the Con was a blast.


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The big 3-0! I was angsting about that---between Logan's Run and "Never trust anyone over 30", I was slightly freaked. Peter sent me a birthday card that said: "So you're turning 30? Cheer up!" and inside: "Some people have been known to live for WEEKS after that."

I took a Greyhound bus up to see him for Thanksgiving, although I didn't confide my ulterior motive to him until I got there.

I was going to get a tattoo.

Tangental to my rock and roll leanings, I'd started buying tattoo magazines, of which there were a couple, and I'd discovered an affinity for tribal, which was an embryonic trend in those days. There was an artist in New York, name of Jonathan Shaw, whose work I really liked, and I determined to visit my bro for proximity and go get inked.

When he found out where it was---1st St and 1st Ave in Manhattan---he refused to let me go alone, and when we drove through there in a cab, I could see why. Freaking scary.

That's when I got my lizard. I expected it to hurt a lot more than it did---GK had gotten a black dragon on her shoulder a year or so earlier, and according to her, it was searing!pain!. I didn't have that experience; in fact, walking back to where we could catch another cab (which is a sign of my brother's caution about the neighborhood as he usually took the subway everywhere)---I felt like I'd lost a fast 30 pounds. Endorphins, gotta love 'em.

Returning from ANYWHERE on Thanksgiving Sunday is a mistake. Especially on a Greyhound bus. At one point on the Jersey turnpike, it took us 47 minutes to go 2 miles. (I checked my watch from the time my window inched past the sign announcing the rest stop ahead to the point where we drew abrest of that exit.) There was a screaming baby on board, the woman in the seat next to me was hacking out a lung, and it was a long night.

Because of the crawling traffic, we had to rendezvous with another bus at a travel plaza, and they cautioned us to bring all of our belongings with us to the new bus. As I was boarding, the driver asked if I'd left anything on the first bus.

"Only my sanity," I replied.

It's probably still kicking around their lost and found.


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